Malinin repeats as U.S. Men’s Figure Skating champion
Ilia Malinin established such a big lead after his peerless short program at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships that the phenom’s free skate Sunday was less a competition and more a coronation.
Even though kings sometimes fall down.
After starting his program with a textbook quad axel — a jump only Malinin has landed in competition — he doubled a planned quad loop, fell on a quad lutz and doubled another planned quad. But even with those miscues, the 19-yearold “Quad God” was still nearly 30 points better than the rest of the competition, cruising to his second consecutive national championship.
Malinin finished with 294.35 points, well below the world-leading score of 314.66 points he had at the Grand Prix Final in December. But it was well ahead of Jason Brown in second with 264.50 points, while Camden Pulkinen soared from fifth after his short program into the bronze-medal position with 262.33 points.
Malinin had been bothered coming into nationals by a boot problem, and he resorted to wearing an old pair that he used at the Grand Prix Final. And with that issue still in the back of his mind, he wasn’t sure whether he would try the quad axel.
He did. And he landed it in spectacular fashion.
The opening pass to his free skate, set to music from the HBO hit series “Succession,” had a base value of 12.5 points, but it was so well done that he scored more than 16 points on that element alone. He followed with a perfect quad lutz before a mistake on his planned quad loop, which he turned into a double that appeared to slow down his momentum.
Malinin recovered to land a quad salchow before falling on his quad lutz. And after doubling his planned quad toe loop, he came back to land a triple lutz-triple axeltriple toe sequence that scored 21plus points and ended his program on a high note.